I collect things that amuse me during my Shirleyfest. I am sure you recall the fill ’em up zip lock ice cube bags from Vienna last year. Amsterdam also provides lots of good amusement this year. First up is this….

Laura and I were eating at Scheepskameel restaurant when we first noticed next to us the table with the dark jacket on the chair and the glass with a little red wine in it. After a while we wondered where was this diner. Then we spied over our shoulder another table with a white jacket on the chair and also a slightly filled red wine glass. That diner didn’t arrive back at their table either. We outdid each other with hilarious guesses as to what was going on…. foul play?….or an instant attraction between 2 diners who had the urge to abandon their table and go somewhere together? We finally settled on our best guess and called the waiter over to see if we were right. Are you still guessing? We were right– this is how the restaurant reserves a table when a person asks for a specific table. The jackets belong to the staff and the wine is leftover from partially finished bottles of other patrons. It is amusing that a RESERVED sign was just too common for this restaurant.

Next….you know how it can be confusing to identify the men’s or ladies’ room in other countries?

At one end of the continuum we have the top two signs seen at a restaurant on the Spui– really hard to tell which is which at a glance I think. Then we have the bottom two seen at Cafe Verward. Interesting use of negative space but not confusing!

Amsterdam’s bike situation just provides a ton of amusement. Night or day, the sheer quantity of bikes is amazing. But it is also interesting what you find in the bike lanes. These are allowed in the bike lanes.

Also allowed in the bike lane are motorized wheelchairs and those tiny smart cars. I didn’t manage to get any pictures of those but can you imagine how “amusing”it is to have all these things passing you as you pedal along. Also given all the variety in the bike lane, I found this amusing,

Cops on bikes may have a hard time catching that fast motorized wheelchair.

Another amusing thing I see in Amsterdam–

No line thru the circle so do you think you should or should not drink alcohol near here? And what is the significance of the percentage sign?

The Dutch are great at so many things, but creatively naming things– not so much. The major churches in Amsterdam are Westerkerk, Noordermarkt, Zuiderkerk, Oude Kerk and Nieuwmarkt Kerk. That’s west church, north church, south church, old church and new church. Amusingly uncreative.

And here I am at the intersection of three streets

Bickers Yard, Little Bickers Street, Great Bickers Street. I’m sure Uber drivers love this.

Would you like some pickles with your pickled eel?

In Rotterdam, this Markthall was completed in 2014 and residents paid a fortune to secure the lovely high rise exclusive apartments above it. Turns out the next year the city allowed this giant ferris wheel to operate 6 months of the year right next to Markthall. So residents have strangers from every country looking into their windows!

This is an art piece made entirely of newspapers. As you walk by on the street you are encouraged to tear off some of the paper to demonstrate the disappearance of newspapers in our world.

I could go on for quite a while as Amsterdam is such an amusing city, but I’ll leave you with this one. I wrote about the Banksy exhibit I went to at Amsterdam’s MOCO. I saw this there.

In 2004, the artist printed 1 million pounds worth of his “Di Faced Tenner”– a play on words as Banksy substituted the Queen’s face with that of Princess Diana. He also included the words Banksy of England. He dropped all,the money into a crowd at the Notting Hill Carnival and created pandamonia.

So that’s funny.